It's probably a mistake to tell students that Stephen Crane didn't care much for college and so spent more time playing baseball than going to classes and never got a diploma but still managed to write two remarkable novels and a bunch of short stories considered among the greatest of all time and experienced adventures on Skid Row and in Cuba and Greece and in shipwreck and storm, and just think of what he would have accomplished if he hadn't died so young! It might give my students the idea that college is a waste of time when such adventures await, so I have to remind them that they're not Stephen Crane and unless they can write like Stephen Crane they'd better stay in their seats and keep learning.
And I probably shouldn't explain to my students how Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days echoes James Joyce's Ulysses in certain chapters, and I definitely shouldn't describe Joyce's prose so deliciously that the students are tempted to go find Ulysses in the library, and I shouldn't tempt them further by saying "nobody reads Ulysses these days because it's so long and complicated and demanding," because these students adore a challenge and my warnings may push them deeper into desire to open Ulysses and say yes I said yes I will yes.
And reciting lines from W.S. Merwin in front of students susceptible to the lures of alliteration is probably the wrong thing to do, because they might be tempted to follow that little warden of where the river went to its foxy lair when they ought to be focusing on the writing for tomorrow's class, and how can a student construct a competent thesis statement when that little vixen is running on the breathless night on the bridge with one end and scampering down the road that leads to places in the silence after the animals.
Frankly, I don't know how anyone gets any work down around here when we're so surrounded by prose that promises adventure and a feast for the senses--but while it's all laid before us, we may as well indulge.
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